FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MARK ROTHKO - PAGE 5

Joseph Solman, a painter who, with Mark Rothko and other modernists, helped shape American art as early as the 1930s and, into a new century, continued to paint in his studio above the Second Avenue Deli in New York, died Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. Having visited a gallery and, along with a friend, washed down a light dinner with Scotch in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Solman died in his sleep, his son, Paul, said. In 1935, when he had been exhibiting for a few years, Mr. Solman formed a progressive group called the Ten -- a somewhat eccentric moniker, considering there were only nine of them.

It's one of the many perks of White House living: the privilege of borrowing art and artifacts from museums for display in the White House. So far President Barack Obama and the first lady have selected 45 artworks, chiefly from the Smithsonian museums. Their top pick: No fewer than a dozen works by artist George Catlin, who lived from 1796 to 1872 and depicted Native Americans, their landscapes and tribal activities. Another favorite artist: William H. Johnson, who is noted for colorful scenes of everyday African-American life.

Phyllis Wattis, one of the nation's most influential cultural philanthropists whose generosity over five decades established her as San Francisco's patron saint of the arts, died June 5. She was 97. A great-granddaughter of Mormon leader Brigham Young, she contributed $150 million to cultural institutions in northern California, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Opera and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco....

As T.S. Eliot wrote in a famous essay, some of our most enduring art is a product of tradition blended with individual talent. Mehmet Aydogdu, a Turkish-Belgian artist in his mid-30s, clearly agrees with this. But his paintings at Gallery 1756, 1756 N. Sedgwick St., indicate that the proportions of the blend are more than a little off. Aydogdu works in the Surrealist tradition, specifically in the line of Salvador Dali's desert landscapes, to which the artist has added diagrams, planetary symbols and calligraphic notations.

By Chris Michaud NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) - Works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Jeff Koons each sold for more than $25 million on Wednesday, helping drive Sotheby's $364 million sale of contemporary art, which the auction house said was among its highest totals ever. Capping two weeks of key spring auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's that saw mixed results overall, the sale was a far cry from the buying frenzy that gripped rival Christie's on Tuesday, which set a record for the biggest art auction in history with a total of $745 million.

In the 28 years since the death of photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard, surrealism has become old hat even in movies and television, yet Meatyard's surrealism has remained fresh. Trembling double-exposure landscapes, blurred figures in rotting rooms, still lifes with crosses and animal parts, children in masks -- they were Meatyard's stock in trade and, as is indicated by a selection of vintage prints at the Stephen Daiter Gallery, they still have the power of hallucination. The photographer said little about his work, though he did once call himself a "primitive" and acknowledged his output came from "an educated background in Zen."

My sister in Denver urged me to exchange an adventurous day in the Rockies for a trip downtown, to the Clyfford Still Museum, and I will be forever grateful. Still was one of the most highly regarded American abstract expressionists of the 20th century, hanging out with luminaries Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman. He is less well-known due to his decision to avoid the art game. He spent his 60-year career (1920 to 1980) painting and teaching in relative obscurity.

Howard Shank wanted to be the next Ernest Hemingway but wound up in advertising, where as a creative executive at Leo Burnett in Chicago he had a hand in campaigns including the "Man from Glad." Mr. Shank, 86, died of lung cancer on Tuesday, May 6, at his Lake Forest home, said his stepdaughter, Edith Emery. Mr. Shank was at Burnett for 22 years, retiring in 1979 as president, chief operating officer and chief creative officer of the agency. For many years, he worked closely with Leo Burnett himself, who founded the agency that spawned ad icons like Tony the Tiger and the Pillsbury Doughboy in the mid 1930s.

You would have sworn she was doing the Charleston. You looked again. The stage was full of African dancers-the Fua Dia Congo troupe from West Africa. A sextet of drummers was pounding out a beat that seemed to shake the seats of the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. The corps of dancers, dressed in seemly but highly colorful and authentic native garb, was performing the Ngoma Bakongo, a group dance in which everyone is in constant motion but individuals rotate turns at center stage, each trying to outdo the other in frenzied rythmic gyrations that range from the near violent to the comic.